BOOK REVIEW: "The Hungry #6: The Rule of Three" by Harry Shannon & Steven W. Booth

The zombies must be stopped… 
Sheriff Penny Miller has come too far and lost too many friends to quit now. She and her companions have made it safely to Mountain Home, Idaho, the operation center of the three-person Enhanced Bioweapons Select Committee that controls the nation’s response to the zombie outbreak. Miller knows they are still funding the research that started the zombie apocalypse. 
And Miller didn’t come to the home of the zombies to attend a church social. 
When Sheriff Miller stumbles across a homegrown militia whose leader shares her hatred of the Select Committee, she sees the opportunity she’s been waiting for. Together with Major McDivitt and his team, Sheriff Miller sets out to destroy the three committee members who have the most to gain from the spread of the zombie virus. One last mission should finish the job. 
…Unless they know she’s coming.

Talk about a whirlwind! The Hungry series has taken us across America while zombies kill everything that moves, and one woman has stood tall against them and their makers, Penny Miller. Unconcerned with her hair and focused on killing the undead, she's the ideal woman and best lead out there.
Of course, Scratch, the biker, is still by her side, somehow having survived the journey along with his paramour, when so many others have died.
This is their last stand, and you know it when you open this book, because the sense of urgency is palpable. You're rushing along with them to save whatever remains of mankind and take down the ones who created the zombies.
You won't want to tear your eyes from the pages. If you're reading this on an ereader, make sure your batteries are charged. The zombies wait for no man or power source!

5/5--a nearly perfect ending!

Purchase The Hungry 6 via:

Amazon

AUTHOR INTERVIEW: Harry Shannon

1. When/why did you decide to become a writer?

I've been a fanatical reader all my life, and like many folks my dream was to write my own novel someday. I remember drawing my own comic books as a child, and writing my first short story in middle school, something about a basketball game. Music and acting distracted me, though I wrote a directed two school plays, so the itch was still there. I started my first novel Night of the Beast at around 20 years old, but didn't finish the book and sell it until I was 50. It's been a long, strange journey, with many different day jobs and distractions along the way. Now I've done fifteen novels, dozens of short stories and hundred of song lyrics.

2. What authors inspired you when you were younger? What books do you enjoy reading today?

John D. MacDonald, Ray Bradbury, Richard Matheson, Robert Heinlein, Saki, Ambrose Bierce, Hemingway, John Steinbeck were all favorites as a child and adolescent. I was precocious. Later, Stephen King of course, plus Michael Connelly, John Connolly, Robert Crais, and my writing Gods are James Lee Burke and Cormac McCarthy.

3. What was the inspiration behind your series The Hungry?

Joe McKinney approached me about making a contribution to a charity anthology about zombies. Steven W. Booth had expressed an interest in writing, and his wife suggested we do it together. It was a solid story, but when I impulsively changed the main character from male to female, something magic happened. Then Steven stuck poor Penny in her old wedding dress and magic happened. We liked the story so much we uploaded it as a free book on Amazon. Tens of thousands of people downloaded it, which launched the first full novel version. Sales motivated us to continue, and now there are six books in the series.

4. Why choose zombies as your main paranormal focus?

As I said, it started with a charity anthology. I’d written about zombies before of course, in PAIN and a number of short stories. Perhaps my best early take on them was in Daemon, a ghoul novel that touched on the zombie craze. Zombies are wonderful stand-ins for social anxieties such as terrorism, Ebola, and economic uncertainty. The real stars are the characters, not the zombies. It’s all about the human beings and how they react to the existential crisis. There is something thrilling about the constant threat of a nasty surprise, and no need for the long build up of most monster stories. You can hit the grounds running.
 

5. Was there any intended symbolism behind it and how the zombies were created in your book?

Steven would give you a different answer, but as far as I am concerned, Joe McKinney nailed it when he wrote the introduction to The Hungry series. The country was reeling from the economic collapse of 2008 and still at war in two countries, plus scarred by a terrorist attack on our own soil. We were not aiming to be so high-brow but Penny Miller is an American icon, the reluctant western hero, the Sheriff who’s got her duty. Her character anchors the series. She is hope and courage and humanity in a nutshell, and uniquely American.

6. You had a career in the music industry and your daughter is following in your footsteps. How important or inspirational has music been to you?

We all remember the music of our teens and twenties for the rest of our lives. I grew up on Bob Dylan and Joni Mitchell and the Eagles and good country songs. Being a musician and a songwriter shaped my personality. It seems to be the same thing for my daughter, and she plans on working in the entertainment industry as an executive if not a performer. It’s in our blood and we come by it honestly. Her mom plays guitar and writes as sing as well, she just didn’t do it for a living. Music is a constant in our house, we have ten guitars and a keyboard and a dulcimer and a mandolin and a banjo and….you get the idea.

7. What other genres would you like to try your hand at?

I enjoy a great western. I’ve done a few short stories, and may do a novel someday as well.

8. What is your personal favorite zombie story, film or book?

I have a soft spot for the original Night of the Living Dead in black and white. My favorite story would probably be The Monkey’s Paw, if I had to choose a novel perhaps Pet Semetary. I love Jonathan Maberry, Joe McKinney, a lot of authors who work with zombies, too many to name.

9. If the zombie apocalypse actually happened, what would you do?

Gather up our 357 and speed loaders and the earthquake kits and if we couldn’t get the hell out of town and into the mountains, just batten down the hatches. I have some faith in the government to respond given enough time.

10. Would you like to see The Hungry in theaters? If so, what actors would you like to see play your characters? All of then were so individualized!

I’d love to see it as a cable television series, the genre has exploded and anything goes. Penny Miller’s ribald humor wouldn’t need to be watered down, it could be violent and sexy and funny at the same time, just like the books. Our friend Gillian Shure has modled Penny Miller on our covers six times, I cannot imagine anyone else in the part. Gillian played Constable Kate Eidson in my little horror movie Dead and Gone, so we go way, way back.

11. Where do you see yourself and your career in the next ten years?

Well, I will be 76 in ten years, and hope to still be writing and enjoying being a Dad, and perhaps watching my daughter Paige in her mid-twenties having a successful personal life and music career. I’ve been a counselor for pushing thirty years and feel like I’d want to cut back on the day job long before that, but you never know. I enjoy that work too.

12. What would you be doing if you weren't writing?

I love the arts, and also the counseling work. If I stopped writing I’d perhaps playing with doing some low budget films, writing music again, acting with friends. Just staying busy.

13. Can you tell KSR what you're working on next?

I have been working hard on Mick Callahan #5, tentatively entitled Rough Men. The series is quite popular, people enjoy the character and his adventures, but I’d grown weary of writing alone. Now it sounds like fun again. I have a novella in Limbus 2 that I’m very proud of, and it is an honor to be in a project with the likes of Jonathan Maberry, Joe McKinney, Gary Braunbeck, and newcomer Brett Talley. I miss short fiction, and intend to get back to writing some stories over the holidays.

14. What authors, dead or alive, would you like to collaborate with?

I love co-writing. Ed Gorman and I have threatened to work together for years now. Same with Joe McKinney. I’d love to try something with Jonathan Maberry, I think we’d create something much darker than his usual work and perhaps more commercial than mine. There are so many good writers I admire.

15. Thank you for participating in the interview. Can you please leave the readers with three things that may surprise them about you?

Hmmm….well, I am a speed reader, though age as slowed me down, and used to read five or six books a week, so my house and office are jammed to the rafters with books, much to the annoyance of my wife. I was nominated for an Emmy in 1982, for the title song to a CBS TV movie called The Gift of Life. We have six cats, at one time I had nine, three of them feral. I love animals. Thanks for asking me to stop by.

Find Mr. Shannon online via:

Official site (has social media and Amazon links)

BOOK REVIEW/AUTHOR INTERVIEW: "The Hungry" by Harry Shannon and Steven W. Booth

REVIEW:

What do you do when you're the first female sheriff of your town and the zombie apocalypse occurs?
If you're Penny Miller, you fight, even when your only allies are a grizzled biker you had originally arrested and your wimp of an ex-husband!

I am one of those who experienced The Hungry for the first time, sent to me by Malena PR for an honest review.
I don't like most zombie stories. With the exception of Braineater Jones and Zom-B, most authors take it way too far. There's a stopping point that most whiz by going 120mph. Mr. Booth and Mr. Shannon, however, knew where the line between horror and "disgusting" was and hit it perfectly!
This book has its gross moments, but what it really has its this unsettling aura that will settle over the reader and make them peer out the window, because it seems so real.
Penny is a true bad-ass. She's a cop, she's confident and she's beautiful. Every girl reading this will have a new heroine, probably the only truly good female lead since Sailor Moon in the '90s!
Great read for all genders!

5/5--awesome!

INTERVIEW WITH STEVEN W. BOOTH:

1. When/why did you decide to become a writer?

I started writing seriously in 2006 or 2007 at the advice of a friend (Harry Shannon, my co-author on The Hungry books). I kept trying to convince him that I wasn’t a creative person, and he wasn’t buying into it. So I started writing a novel that didn’t go anywhere, but which I have come back to after 8 years and I am now reworking into a viable project. And it turns out that Harry was right, I can be creative when I choose to be, which is a nice feeling.

2. What authors inspired you when you were younger? What books do you enjoy reading today?

David Gerrold (still my favorite author). Patrick O’Brien, Steven Saylor, Steven Brust, Isaac Asimov, Piers Anthony, Gregory McDonald. Those are the ones I can remember. I wasn’t much of a reader until I was about 15 years old. Then my older sister (who was and still is a voracious reader) handed me a couple of series, Xanth by Piers Anthony and The War Against the Cthorr by David Gerrold. I was off and running.
Today I like cross-genre mysteries and detective stories, though they are hard to find. I’m actually putting together an anthology of exactly these kinds of stories, anchored by David Gerrold (I have my very own ORIGINAL David Gerrold story. Wow!), and I’ve asked Steven Saylor and Steven Brust to participate as well. It should be an amazing project.

3. What was the inspiration behind your novel The Hungry?

The inspiration was, Harry Shannon and I were given the opportunity to contribute a short story to a charity anthology edited by Joe McKinney and Michelle McCrary titled Dead Set. We wanted to do a story about a small town sheriff who gets overrun on the first night of the zombie apocalypse. Somewhere along the line, instead of John Miller, we decided the sheriff would be Penny Miller, which put her in conflict (with a small amount of sexual tension) with one of her prisoners, a biker named Scratch. In the first draft, no one survived the onslaught, but Harry doesn’t believe in killing the main character of his stories, so Sheriff Miller survived. Then we asked the question, what happens next? The answer is The Hungry and all the books in that series.

4. Why choose zombies as your main paranormal focus?

That was mostly chance. Again, we were being opportunists in taking advantage of Joe McKinney’s generous offer to include us. Zombies are scary and fun at the same time, so we went with it. And you can’t exactly switch in the middle of a zombie apocalypse story to start worrying about werewolves or other supernatural creatures. Besides, our zombies are not supernatural—they don’t claw their way out of graves, for example. They were living humans before they became the undead. They do make a marvelous back backdrop for putting your characters in danger and watching them respond. Our books are mostly character driven, so the zombies, while “real” in the context of the novels, are not what we are talking about. Instead, they are stories about how people respond to extreme circumstances. I often wonder how I would respond to an apocalypse—but I expect I would be the first to go in that kind of situation. I’m too tied to our modern infrastructure to survive the complete loss of it.

5. Was there any intended symbolism behind it and how the zombies were created in your book?

If you ask Harry, yes. He postulates that zombies represent our fear of death and the unknown, and also an unstoppable relentless force of death and destruction. For me, not so much. I wanted the zombies to be believable within the context of the story—our internal logic had to hold up to scrutiny—and I wanted them to be scary. But do I believe that they represent corporate America and its dominance over our lives, crushing our very souls under its undead weight? No, that would be my father.

6. Will we ever see Penny Miller again in the future? (Describe the series, and latest developments please.)

Penny Miller still has some life in her. The series goes beyond The Hungry to four more episodes (soon to be five for a total of 6 books). In The Hungry 2: The Wrath of God, Penny and her companions meet a team of mercenaries who must go back into zombie central to retrieve critical data that can stop the spread of the zombies. Naturally it doesn’t go that way. In The Hungry 3: At the End of the World, Penny and her companions try to escape to the Colorado Rockies for the winter and get away from the zombies at least for a little while. That goes badly almost from the beginning. The Hungry 4: The Rise of the Triad has Penny captured and put into government sponsored “rehab” for her belief in the zombies, but really it’s just a front to find the secret to making zombie bites harmless. And in The Hungry 5: All Hell Breaks Loose, Penny decides to take the fight to the government jerks who started the zombie research, and who are perpetuating the problem by continuing to look for the key to creating supersoldiers. The Hungry 6: The Rule of Three finishes the story arc and puts Penny directly at odds with the very people who want to see most of North America become the slobbering undead.
After that, who knows?

7. What other genres would you like to try your hand at?

I currently have a science-fiction story in the works, but it is evolving pretty quickly, so all I can tell you is that I don’t destroy the world until the end of the first act, and the lead is also a woman, though nothing like Penny Miller.
Ultimately, I would like to try my hand at mystery and private eye stories with a cross-genre twist like the anthology I’m putting together. Think Asimov’s Caves of Steel, Steven Brust’s Jhereg/Vlad Taltos stories, and Steven Saylor’s Roma sub Rosa/Gordianus the Finder books. That’s the stuff I like to read, and I’d like to try writing in that vein as well.

8. What is your personal favorite zombie story, film or book?

It’s a tossup between Night of the Living Dead and World War Z. I like Night of the Living Dead because I think Romero got the feel of how helpless and out of control the characters feel when trying to survive the first night of the apocalypse. And World War Z has unquestionably the scariest zombies I’ve encountered. There might be worse ones out there, but I haven’t found them. And Max Brooks’s zombies are at least a couple of orders of magnitude scarier than anything I’ve come up with.

9. If the zombie apocalypse actually happened, what would you do?

Probably die. I’m weapons-trained, but I don’t own any (other than archery equipment which wouldn’t last very long). I have health concerns that require periodic access to a pharmacy, and even if I could find what I’m looking for in an abandoned store, how long would that last me? And I don’t have a secret armored fortress, Navy SEAL friends, or a supercar with rocket launchers. So, I’d probably be an extra in someone else’s story if the apocalypse actually came to be. Sucks to be me.

10. Would you like to see The Hungry in theaters? If so, what actors would you like to see play your characters? All of them were so individualized!

Yes, I would love to see The Hungry on the screen, big or small. Gillian Shure has been our model for Penny Miller (on the covers) since the first novel came out, and I have trouble picturing anyone else as Penny. As for Scratch, I’m going to get into big trouble. Everyone—including Harry—seems to think that Norman Reedus should play Scratch, but—this is where I get into trouble—I modeled him (at least in my own mind) after the character of George in the movie Erin Brockovich, played by Aaron Eckhart. Long hair, beard, scruffy, tattoos. That’s who I picture. But I think he’s a little old for the part now. Terrill Lee should be someone tall and lanky, but if I were casting the movie, I’d probably cast Chris Platt (from Guardians of the Galaxy) in the role. He’s funny and versatile enough to pull off the role. Sheppard, well, I don’t know. Christian Bale, maybe. He’s supposed to have “movie-star good looks” and be deeply troubled. After The Dark Night, I think he’s show that he can pull it off. If I’m picking actors from that movie, though, Heath Ledger might do a better job, but he’s not available any more.

11. Where do you see yourself and your career in the next ten years?

I see my writing and publishing career growing in 10 years. As much as I adore Harry, I am going to start writing my own stuff and establishing my own name as a writer. Again, I have several sci-fi and fantasy ideas in mind, many with mystery or detective themes. If I could be any other author out there, I’d want to be Gregory McDonald, who created Fletch. I love his lean style, his sense of humor, and his ability to captivate the reader. I like writing series, so I guess in ten years, I want to have one or two other series under my belt that are worthy of being next to Brust, Saylor, and McDonald on someone’s bookshelves.

12. What would you be doing if you weren't writing?

I have an MBA in Nonprofit Management and a Masters in Teaching. I’d probably be working in a nonprofit school or university, which I am to a certain extent now. I am the Director of Fundraising for a nonprofit named VETBOSS (www.vetboss.org) which helps veterans become successful entrepreneurs. I’m going to be doing that concurrently with writing and publishing.

13. Can you tell KSR what you're working on next?

Apart from finishing The Hungry 6, I’m working hard on an idea for a post-apocalyptic science fiction story with Lovecraftian-type monsters who invade from another dimension. The main character, a woman scientist (she was going to be a librarian in honor of both my wife and my mother—long story—but she changed from the needs of the story), must find a way to protect what they believe to be the last surviving humans on earth, as well as protecting every living still on earth. That’s probably more than I should say, but it should be fun to see if I can pull it off.

14. What authors, dead or alive, would you like to collaborate with?

Larry Niven. His collaborations always seem to improve on the best storytellers out there.
Gregory McDonald. If anyone can pull off a mystery in a charming and funny way, he can.
John Scalzi. I can already feel the Mallet of Loving Correction coming down on my first draft.
Neil Gaiman. There’s a creative mind. It would be like co-writing a screenplay with Tim Burton.
Leo Tolstoy. Just to learn from him. I believe that Anna Karenina is the best general adult novel ever written. Bar none.
C.S. Lewis. For the same reason as Tolstoy. His Narnia books are lush, emotionally charged landscapes. I could learn a lot from him.

15. Thank you for participating in the interview. Can you please leave the readers with three things that may surprise them about you?

I earned my pilot’s license when I was 17, and had to make two emergency landings—one because I was trying to teach myself to do loops without an inverted flight carburetor, and once because I couldn’t read a weather chart.
If I hadn’t bought the wrong kind of electronic piano in 2006, I’d probably be a performing musician instead of an author right now.
I have studied French, German, Spanish, Klingon, and I can recite the entire Han Solo/Greedo speech from Star Wars in the original Rodian from memory. Han shot first.

Find Mr. Booth online via:

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